


Like Never Before

by wingedspirit



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Author knows nothing about gardening, Canon Compliant, Fluff, Home, Idiots in Love, It's okay though neither does Crowley, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:55:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27164170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingedspirit/pseuds/wingedspirit
Summary: After the Armageddon-that-wasn't, Aziraphale and Crowley figure out how to fit together. A story told in a series of vignettes.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 117





	Like Never Before

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this quite some time ago (back in June, if I remember right), got to the point where it really only needed a final pass of edits, and then got quite desperately blocked on any and all creative pursuits due to the world's whole everything. Slowly but surely, I'm getting back into it, and a fic that's mostly just the husbands being soft with each other seemed like a good place to start.
> 
> Title from [_Songbird_ , by Eva Cassidy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTNLYeaL7No).

In the aftermath of the Armageddon not happening, and everything that follows, nothing really changes. Why would it? They each have their own home, their own place, their own preferences; and besides, they are an angel and a demon. They have been close all their long, long life, as close as they could, as close as they _dared_ , yes — but that still was not very close. They each have their own quirks, their own foibles; their lives would not mesh well.

They have what they wanted, now. They can spend as much time as they wish together, without needing to watch over their shoulder, and so they do — concerts and films, theatres and museums, long walks in the park. Whenever one asks, the other says yes. They can, and they do, and that is enough.

⁂

They have drinks at the bookshop; Crowley falls asleep on the sofa. Aziraphale occupies himself with a book, and politely ignores his snoring, and then quietly frets about his muttering in his sleep, until Crowley shouts himself awake, rolls off the sofa and hits the floor with a loud thump, toppling over several stacks of books in the process. Crowley blinks a few times, shakes his head, and mutters the foulest curse Aziraphale has heard from him in a long while.

“Be _careful_.” It comes out sharper than he intended it, reproachful.

Crowley looks at him for a moment, pale, wide-eyed and lost; then his expression shutters and melts into his usual, studied unconcern. “Ah, you know me. I’m always careful.”

“Not careful enough,” Aziraphale says tartly. “Look at all these books. It’ll take me forever to put them back in their proper place.”

“Their _proper place_.” Crowley snorts. “They’ve been in those piles for at least half a century.”

“Nevertheless. You might’ve damaged the binding, and that always takes so long to fix properly.”

“You can just miracle it, no?”

“It’s not the same as doing it by hand.” Aziraphale is aware he sounds peevish, but he can’t stop himself.

Crowley frowns. “But you’ve done it before. I know you have.”

“It’s not the _same_ ,” Aziraphale repeats. “I can always tell which ones I had to miracle.”

Crowley’s frown resolves into a mulish expression. “Well. Nothing would’ve happened if you’d kept them on shelves. Or if your ancient sofa wasn’t so bloody uncomfortable.”

Aziraphale scowls at him. “Well. If my sofa is so uncomfortable, why are you still here? You have a perfectly good bed in your flat. Maybe you should just go sleep there instead.”

Crowley levers himself to his feet, grabs his sunglasses from where he’d carelessly discarded them on an end table, and puts them on, with rather more emphasis than Aziraphale thinks is strictly necessary. “You’re right. Maybe I should.”

“Fine.”

“ _Fine_.” Crowley rolls his eyes, the gesture clear even behind the sunglasses, and stalks out of the bookshop without another word. He does not slam the door, but it’s very clearly a very near thing.

Aziraphale picks up the fallen books, and very carefully restacks them, and just as carefully does not feel guilty.

⁂

They don’t talk to each other for a week. Aziraphale remains mostly in his bookshop, and reads; and reminds himself of all the times they have gone years, decades, _centuries_ without seeing each other; and tries not to feel bereft. Then Crowley calls to invite him to the theatre, and, for a while, all is normal again.

⁂

They always meet at the bookshop, never at Crowley’s flat. The one exception had been the night after Armageddon didn’t happen, but then they’d both thought the bookshop was gone. Other than that — well. Crowley had made it, he hoped, perfectly clear that Aziraphale would always, always be welcome, no matter what, but nevertheless — the bookshop is familiar, and safe in its familiarity, and so they always meet at the bookshop.

They always meet at the bookshop, except — except Aziraphale has just showed up, just dropped by to invite Crowley to lunch, cheerfully claiming to have been in the neighbourhood anyway — which is fair enough, they do not live at all far from each other, except —

_Except_ , Aziraphale _is in his flat_ , looking around with careful curiosity, studying in the daylight what he’d only spared a cursory glance for in the quiet, frightened darkness of their one night here; and it’s stupid, it’s so stupid, he’s known Aziraphale six thousand years, the angel knows him better than anyone else ever could, but — it makes him feel uncomfortable, and obviously, painfully _seen_. And so he mumbles something about having to water his plants, and all but flees.

Which is, as it turns out, a spectacularly idiotic idea, because Aziraphale follows. Of course he does.

The moment Aziraphale steps through the door, the plants lean towards him, like he is the sun and they have been in the dark forever; and their leaves whisper; and Crowley can work out that they’re telling the angel about him.

“Obviously I shout at them,” he blurts out. He can’t help it. He’s always known this was going to happen, and it’s better to lance the boil, isn’t it, no matter how much it’ll hurt. Best to get this over with quickly and not drag it out.

Aziraphale frowns minutely, the smallest wrinkle showing up between his eyebrows. “You do?”

“Of course I do,” Crowley snaps, too sharp by half. “I’m a demon, aren’t I?”

The plants recognise his tone of voice, if nothing else. They hurriedly pull away from Aziraphale, and straighten, and start shaking. Aziraphale’s frown deepens. “My dear…”

“They’re not going to grow well otherwise, are they? They’re not going to do _anything_ just because I care for them. I’m a _demon_.” There’s a small part of him that knows this is not at all how this ought to go, that’s staring at the rest of him rather like how one might stare at a thirty-car pileup on the motorway, but he’s so upset — angry — _frightened_ — he can’t stop. He doesn’t know how to stop. “There’s nothing on Earth or anywhere else at all that would. You would know, wouldn’t you?”

Aziraphale takes a half-step towards him, eyes wide, holding out a hand. “ _Crowley_.”

“Of course you would. You wish I could be an angel again.”

Aziraphale recoils a few steps backwards as if he’d been slapped, hands clutched to his chest, the hurt obvious on his face. The plants have utterly frozen; for a moment, two, the silence is deafening, smothering, so absolute Crowley’s ears are ringing with it.

Slowly, slowly, the outside world filters back in. The wind rustling a blind in the other room, where he’d left the door to the balcony half-open; the faint noise of cars going by in the streets far below; a plane passing overhead; even fainter, a mournful siren in the distance.

“I think you should leave,” Crowley bites out, low, voice rough and throat scratchy as if he’d been shouting, even though he hadn’t been. Had he?

Aziraphale looks like he wants to say something, for a moment; but then his expression closes off. “Yes. Yes, I rather think I ought to.” And then he’s gone, the aftereffects of his hurried miracle leaving Crowley’s ears ringing again.

Crowley picks up the plant mister, and sprays his plants, and examines them for flaws, and only shouts at them a little when he finds none; and very carefully does not look at the empty place Aziraphale has left in the room, and just as carefully does not feel guilty.

⁂

They don’t talk to each other for a month. Crowley goes for long drives, making it a point to break every single traffic law he can, and tells himself that he’s not running away from anything, that he prefers Aziraphale not being there to complain about his driving; and anyway, if he looks back at the past six thousand years, they’ve spent more time apart than they have together, and it’s always been fine. Which means it’s perfectly fine now. And then Aziraphale calls to invite him to lunch, and if he feels like he can suddenly breathe again, nobody needs to know. Things change. It’s fine.

⁂

They have drinks at the bookshop; Crowley falls asleep on the sofa, which is large and comfortable, tucked under a massive, brand-new bookshelf that is crammed full of books. Aziraphale sits nearby, in his favourite armchair, and occupies himself with a book; when Crowley starts muttering in his sleep, he sets the book aside, and reaches forward, and gently strokes Crowley’s hair until he subsides.

In the morning, they go for breakfast at one of Aziraphale’s favourite cafés.

⁂

They have dinner at Crowley’s flat. After, Crowley takes Aziraphale through the flat, room by room, showing him around, and introduces him to his plants. Then he takes him upstairs, to the roof garden, and introduces him to his other plants, each of them imperfectly unique in its own way; and quietly, haltingly explains.

They sit up there all night, talking and looking at the stars.

⁂

There are books in Crowley’s flat that he didn’t put there, scattered across the rooms like leaves blown around by the wind, gathered in small stacks like snowdrifts accumulating on side tables and in corners. Crowley makes the mistake of teasing Aziraphale about this; Aziraphale, by all appearances, takes it in good humour, but when he leaves, the books disappear, too.

The next time Aziraphale visits, there’s a new armchair in Crowley’s flat. It’s almost identical to the one in the bookshop, except it’s black, because Crowley, too, has standards; and a sleek, modern lamp that looks a little intimidating, but nevertheless casts a warm patch of light directly on the armchair, perfect for reading; and a very pointedly empty bookshelf right next to it.

There are books in Crowley’s flat that he didn’t put there, and every time they overflow the bookshelf, another bookshelf appears.

⁂

The first time he finds a pair of Crowley’s sunglasses, left behind at the bookshop, Aziraphale just shrugs and sets them by the till, figuring Crowley will pick them up next time. Except he doesn’t; instead, there’s another pair left behind. Then another. Then another.

Eventually, Aziraphale miracles them to the glovebox of the Bentley, where he knows Crowley keeps his spares; and then spends the next three days quietly fretting about it. He does not want to accidentally make Crowley feel unwelcome again. But Crowley makes no mention of it, so all must be well. Or maybe he just hasn’t yet noticed.

A week later, Crowley invites him out for a picnic. It’s a bright, sunny day, warmer than you’d expect for early spring; by the time they get to Highgate Wood, Crowley has shed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, and Aziraphale, likewise, has taken off his coat, removed his bowtie and undone the first few buttons of his shirt.

Naturally, they spend most of the day together. It’s not until very late in the evening, several hours after Crowley has dropped him off at the bookshop, that Aziraphale realises he has forgotten his bowtie in the Bentley. It’s hardly an issue, he has several identical bowties, but he does rather hope Crowley will not mind.

Not ten minutes later, the bowtie, rather improbably folded in the shape of a duck, is dropped in his lap by a miracle, along with a note that says, simply: _Thank you for the sunglasses. —C._

Aziraphale smiles, and tucks the bowtie away in a drawer, without unfolding it.

Crowley still occasionally forgets his sunglasses at the bookshop. Aziraphale is a lot more careful with his bowtie, but the duck bowtie is eventually joined by one folded into a snake, and one folded into a dolphin.

⁂

Crowley has a key to the bookshop. Aziraphale has a key to Crowley’s flat.

Their wards have long since been set to allow each other access, of course, and a locked door has never been a true obstacle for beings who can just miracle it open. It’s not a big deal.

⁂

In their search for the perfect picnic spot, they range further and further away from London, until even with Crowley’s driving speed, they’d have to cut their actual picnicking time woefully short to make it there and back in a day.

They start spending the occasional night at a bed and breakfast, and though Crowley very carefully selects them to be to Aziraphale’s tastes, he can see the angel is not wholly comfortable. Aziraphale doesn’t sleep, Aziraphale spends the night, more often than not, reading; it’s a very long-standing habit, and the breaking of it, the lack of books when they’re spending the night away, unsettles him.

Crowley suggests that Aziraphale take some books with him, once; but that only ends up making it worse. Aziraphale spends the whole time fretting that he’ll forget the books and they will be lost, and, when they arrive at the bed and breakfast, ends up leaving them in the Bentley. The next time they go for a trip, Aziraphale doesn’t bring any books, and Crowley says nothing.

⁂

It’s clear that Aziraphale feels that the occasional uncomfortable night is an acceptable trade-off for the time they spend together, but Crowley is not convinced. There has to be a solution. A place of their own, perhaps. A cottage, picturesque and relatively remote, like all the bed and breakfasts they’ve been staying at; not somewhere to move permanently — he knows Aziraphale would never leave his bookshop behind — but somewhere they can use as a home base when away from home, somewhere Aziraphale can leave his books and know they will be safe, like he does in Crowley’s flat now.

Slanting a glance at Aziraphale to make sure he won’t see what he’s doing, Crowley pulls up a property search website on his phone. He’s just going to take a look, see what he can find. If he ends up buying a cottage and Aziraphale doesn’t like the idea — well. It’s not like money is an object. It’ll be no big loss.

⁂

Aziraphale has been thinking rather a lot, lately. He may be slow on the uptake, but he does pay attention; and without any books to keep him occupied at night, while Crowley is asleep, he’s had a lot of opportunities to think about the things he’s noticed.

Every time they’re away from London for the night, Crowley ends up spending rather a lot of time in the garden of whatever bed and breakfast they are staying at, prodding at flowers and leaves and muttering quietly to himself. And Aziraphale can’t help but think — a garden might do Crowley good.

He knows, of course, that Crowley would never leave London. Crowley lives fast, and wild, and reckless, and a large city offers countless opportunities for that, and Aziraphale cannot imagine Crowley would ever give that up — especially not for someone like him. But if he had a cottage somewhere quiet, somewhere remote, they could spend the occasional weekend there, and Crowley would be able to take care of the garden. Shout at it, even, given a remote enough location — although Aziraphale rather hopes Crowley has had his fill of taking out his hurts on his plants.

A cottage with a garden that suits, in the right location, is not going to be easy to find, and is likely to be expensive, but — he’s got nothing but time. Once they get back to London, he’s going to start looking into estate agents.

⁂

“I’m afraid we are closed at the moment.”

“Ah — I was hoping to speak with Mr Fell? This is Anne Martins, from Seavills and Co estate agents.”

Aziraphale looks over to Crowley. The demon is by all appearances dead to the world, sprawled out on the sofa and snoring faintly, in spite of the fact that it’s barely two in the afternoon. “Speaking.”

“I’ve been able to arrange a viewing for the cottage you were interested in, for this coming Tuesday, but as you are aware, the property is in a quite remote location. Someone else has also requested a viewing — I was hoping you would not object to another prospective buyer being present?”

⁂

“Nah, that’s alright. I don’t mind.” If the cottage is as perfect as its description makes it sound, it _will_ be his. Few humans would be able to match the kind of offer he can make; and if they get stubborn — that’s nothing a well-placed miracle can’t fix.

“Lovely. Have a very good evening, then, Mr Crowley, and I shall see you on Tuesday.”

“Yeah. Take care.”

⁂

The viewing is not at all going how Anne expected it to.

She would never breathe a word of this out loud — she is, after all, a professional — but she has, over the years, built a very thorough set of expectations about the kind of clientele a property like the cottage she is showing today attracts; and neither of the two prospective buyers fit them at all. Sure, Mr Crowley drives a sleek, immaculately-kept vintage car, but he also dresses like a washed-up rocker from several decades ago, topped off by a pair of entirely unnecessary sunglasses that completely obscure his eyes. And sure, Mr Fell is old-fashioned, but not in the deliberate, “rich enough to not care about fashion” manner she is familiar with — in an absent-minded, cobbled-together sort of way that starkly reminds her of her late grandmother.

And, of course, there’s the fact that they’d stopped dead and stared at each other for a solid minute when they’d arrived at the cottage, but at the same time had fervently denied knowing each other when she’d asked. They keep very carefully not looking at each other as she shows them around the cottage, except —

When he’d emailed to inquire about the cottage, Mr Crowley had seemed particularly interested in the library, a cozy room with a large fireplace and built-in, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves; but when she shows them that room, he just stands in the doorway and stares while Mr Fell explores, checking every detail and murmuring happily to himself. And Mr Fell, on the phone, had seemed extremely keen about the cottage garden and expansive attached grounds; but it’s Mr Crowley who moves instantly to look at the plants, crouching to examine the flower beds and gently running his hands over tree leaves as Mr Fell looks on.

Anne watches how they look at each other when they don’t think they’re being seen, and thinks she understands.

When the viewing is over, Mr Fell smiles politely at her. “Could you give us a moment, my dear?”

She nods, and watches as they walk away from her to stand under one of the trees in the garden. They talk for a while; it looks like they’re arguing, but they’re speaking so quietly she can’t hear a word. When they come back, they ask if they can make a joint offer; when she confirms it’s possible, they name a sum that’s more than twice the property’s asking price.

The contract is signed the very next day.

⁂

Aziraphale moves from one armchair to the other again, bouncing slightly, with a pleased little wriggle. “Oh, I just can’t decide. They’re both so comfortable. And so wonderfully restored!”

The proprietor of the antique shop, a friendly, older woman Aziraphale had immediately hit it off with, dimples. “I am so glad you feel that way, Mr Fell. I do most of the restoration work myself.”

Aziraphale beams. “Why, that’s just wonderful! You should be very proud.”

“Should’ve just gone to Ikea,” Crowley mutters, under his breath. Aziraphale and the woman both turn to him instantly, identical looks of horror etched on their face. Crowley holds his hands up in surrender and wanders off to find himself a dark corner to lurk in for a while.

They buy both armchairs, a matching sofa, and two massive bookcases.

⁂

Knowing how particular Crowley is about his plants, Aziraphale had very much expected they would end up spending a good part of the day at the garden centre; but Crowley has been staring at a rack of violets for a solid hour, by now, scrutinising them plant by plant, leaf by leaf.

“If none of these are acceptable — do we need violets at all?” Aziraphale ventures, eventually. The violets all look fine to him, none of them is visibly unhealthy, but he doesn’t know what Crowley is looking for.

“There is _mint_ in the garden,” Crowley says, with the tone of someone making the direst pronouncement, a tone Aziraphale distinctly remembers last hearing when they had discussed Armageddon.

“Yes…?” There is, in fact, rather a lot of mint in the cottage garden; it was clearly originally intended to be confined to a small area, but had long since run riot all over. When they’d viewed the garden, Crowley had scowled at it and muttered something inaudible but very obviously threatening under his breath; and the mint had blatantly ignored him, which Aziraphale had never before seen a plant do.

“I need good plants to fight it, but none of _these_ —” Crowley sweeps the whole rack of violets, top to bottom, with a scathing glare “— particularly fill me with confidence.”

Most of the violets start trembling, enough that the whole rack is set to rattling. Aziraphale flinches; Crowley rolls his eyes and holds the rack firm with one hand, reaching forward and stroking the plants with the other. “No need for that, now,” he says, the severity of his tone at odds with the gentleness of his touch.

The violets stop trembling; Crowley gives them all another long look, then nods to himself and picks several up, gently setting them into the shopping trolley.

The chosen ones, Aziraphale notices, are the ones that had not been afraid.

⁂

They stay at the cottage for a weekend.

Crowley spends the entirety of Saturday working on the garden while Aziraphale reads in the shade of the apple tree. It’s a warm, sunny summer day, and they both shed their usual outfits in favour of short-sleeved shirts and shorts a few hours in.

On Sunday, Aziraphale cooks breakfast and very carefully does not laugh while Crowley, swearing loudly, miracles away his sunburn. They visit several antique markets, have lunch at a local pub, go for a drive by the coast and then return to the cottage for dinner. This time, Crowley cooks.

They return to London Monday morning. Aziraphale leaves the books he’d brought at the cottage.

⁂

No matter how many books Aziraphale brings with him when they visit, he never runs out of shelf space. Every time he’s almost filled a bookcase, another appears — and all the bookcases are real.

The rooms are, of course, extensively miracled; the cottage is large, but not that large, and they’d very quickly agreed that it needed to be bigger on the inside, especially since they would both need their own space for their own things. Still, every single bookcase is real — some very old, some very new, all unique, all carrying the touch of the humans who crafted them. All to Aziraphale’s taste, even though he’s only personally acquired the two he started the room off with.

Aziraphale runs his fingers along the shelves, and looks out of the window, into the garden where Crowley is busy arguing with the mint, and smiles.

⁂

Crowley battles the mint; the mint battles Crowley. By mid-September, they’ve reached an uneasy sort of truce. The mint isn’t spreading any further, but neither is it particularly willing to entertain ceding any of its territory to the violets.

One day, as they are leaving, Aziraphale leaves Crowley to wait in the Bentley and pops back into the cottage briefly, claiming to have forgotten a half-read book he wants to bring back to London with him. Crowley thinks nothing of it.

It’s a cold autumn, and a colder winter; between one thing and the other, they end up not returning to the cottage until the following spring. When Crowley checks the garden, he finds the mint much reduced and, he would swear, sulking a little; the violets have taken over most of the area.

He still thinks nothing of it, right up until lunchtime, when Imogen Fothergill, local harridan, resident bigot and, sadly, reigning three-time champion of the village’s best garden contest, accosts them at the pub and loudly accuses them of having secretly planted mint in her garden.

Crowley can only watch in wonder as Aziraphale politely, but icily, points out that their properties are on the very opposite ends of the village; that they have been gone for months; and that any expert gardener would surely have noticed an infestation of mint before it spread as widely as she is describing. Aziraphale does not, of course, outright claim that Imogen must’ve planted the mint herself and lost control of it, but the implication is clear as day.

Imogen tries to argue. Aziraphale implacably shuts her down. Five minutes later, they have attracted a considerable audience; it feels like half the village is there, taking an extended stroll near the pub and very pointedly not eavesdropping. They are too British to clap when she shrieks and stomps off in impotent rage, but Crowley can tell they want to.

When he’s sure nobody’s looking at them anymore, Crowley catches Aziraphale’s eye, and smiles, and shakes his head, helplessly fond.

Aziraphale colours faintly, and ducks his head, and grins, and returns to his meal.

⁂

“We’re not taking that statue.”

“We’re not — hang on, which statue? You don’t mean —”

“No, the lectern is obviously coming, we can put it in the garden. _That_ one, however —” Aziraphale points emphatically down the corridor “— is _not_. There is no space for it in the cottage, and I will not have it in the garden. The neighbours will talk.”

Crowley makes a valiant, if futile, attempt to avoid blushing brightly, and refrains from pointing out that the garden is more his than it is Aziraphale’s, and that the closest neighbours to them are more than a mile away. Aziraphale does have a point. Still — “They are _wrestling_ , angel.”

“I’m sure they are. We’re still not taking it.”

Crowley does not sulk, because he’d like to keep what little dignity he has left. “Fine.” He’d be lying if he said he will not miss it — looking back on it with the benefit of hindsight, it was one of the very first signs that he had an interest in Aziraphale that went well beyond the adversarial.

They’re both giving things up in this process, though, and it’s not even a question. If Aziraphale is uncomfortable with the statue, well, then, the statue goes.

⁂

“You’re sure you don’t want to take those? We do have the space.”

“I’m sure. They’re —” Aziraphale pauses. He is not unaware of his eccentricities; he would never have thought he would deliberately expose them to anyone. But this is Crowley. “They’re decoys.”

“Decoys?”

“You have noticed, I’m sure, how sometimes I would get customers who would just not be deterred —”

“How terrible for a bookshop to have customers who actually want to purchase books,” Crowley deadpans; and then immediately breaks into a grin, as if to make sure Aziraphale knows that he is teasing — as if there had been any doubt at all.

Aziraphale grins back at him. “Yes, well. I found it useful, in those cases, to have books in the shop that I did not particularly care about, and redirect any such customer towards them, so they’d still have the satisfaction of having purchased a book —”

“— but you wouldn’t have to give up a book in your collection to get them to leave,” Crowley finishes, nodding. “Clever. So, just leaving them here, then.”

“Indeed. Young Newt can sell them on my behalf, as well as any other worthless books I will doubtlessly encounter in the process of filling the holes in my collection.”

“Right, right.” Crowley pauses, seemingly hesitating, and then takes a deep breath. “You know you don’t have to do this, right? Give up the shop, I mean. Newt doesn’t need a job, Anathema’s wealthy enough on her own account to support them both, and even if she weren’t, we could help them out in other ways — and I know how attached you are to the shop, you could just keep it, keep going back and forth, you’ve always kept erratic opening hours to begin with and you know I don’t mind driving you, I don’t mind —”

“ _Crowley_.”

Crowley stops talking immediately, cutting himself off in an incoherent jumble of consonants.

Aziraphale smiles. “I want to.”

⁂

Two weeks later, they’re still unpacking. Even though they have, really, been very slowly moving into the cottage for more than a year, they have both collected a lot of items over the course of their long, long lives, and so, there are a _lot_ of boxes, most of them unlabelled.

Crowley is dealing with a particularly large one, stuffed full of more books that it ought to feasibly be able to contain, when he encounters something that is very distinctly not a book.

It looks like a miniature version of the statue that used to be in his flat, precise down to the smallest detail; when he lifts it out of the box, he finds it is much heavier than it reasonably should be — very close to the weight the full-sized statue had been, if he is any judge.

“Oh, that’s where it went.” Aziraphale wanders over and pulls the statue out of Crowley’s hands, then, as Crowley stares after him, moves to a still mostly empty bookshelf and carefully places the statue on it. The shelf creaks ominously; they both reach out to reinforce it with a miracle at the same time.

⁂

They do not go back to London.

The seasons change; the first snowfall of the year finds them in the cottage. Aziraphale is curled up on one end of the sofa that used to be in the bookshop, knees bent and feet tucked up on the side, reading; Crowley is sprawled out in the remaining space, leaning comfortably back with his head pillowed on Aziraphale’s legs.

Aziraphale turns a page and pauses for a moment, looking up from the book, then reaches to gently stroke Crowley’s hair. “Crowley?”

“Yeah?” Crowley does not look away from his phone, but wriggles slightly, pushing into the touch like a cat.

“You know I love you, right?”

“Yeah, angel, course I do.”

Aziraphale nods to himself and returns to his reading, still running his fingers through Crowley’s hair.

For a few minutes, there is silence, broken only by the crackling of the fire in the fireplace; then Crowley makes a strangled noise and drops his phone on his face, with a pained yelp. “ _Aziraphale_.”

Aziraphale cannot quite manage to smother his chuckle. “Yes, my dear?”

“I. I _meant_. I also.” Crowley looks up, eyes wide. “I love you. You — you know that, right?”

“Of course.” Aziraphale smiles down at him. “Of course I do.”

“Oh.” Crowley smiles back, bright as the first dawn of the world. “Oh, good.”

**Author's Note:**

> In spite of everything, I _still_ have a Good Omens problem. You can find proof on my [Tumblr](https://wingedspirit.tumblr.com/).


End file.
